What activities does the house in "There Will Come Soft Rains" perform?

In Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," the house is designed to perform every function that a servant would perform. It takes care of all domestic chores like cooking and cleaning, but it also caters to the preferences and entertainment desires of the inhabitants, just like servants would attend wealthy people. 

The story is set in the year 2026, and all the functions of the house are automated. The story opens with the house telling the time and urging its inhabitants to awaken. It then cooks breakfast, which no one is around to eat, and cleans up all the dishes. The house calls out reminders, much like Google calendar does for us today: birthdays, bills that are due, etc. 

The house, the only one left standing, also protects the one-time inhabitants. It detects movement and asks for a password from anyone who comes near. If it doesn't receive a password, it shuts the windows and pulls the shades to protect itself. 

The house cleans up after the dog and deposits all dust and debris into an incinerator in the basement. In the evening, the house sets up a bridge table and snacks. The house draws water for baths, and the nursery walls light up to entertain the children. Every hour that goes by has the house performing another task. In the evenings, the house lights a cigar for the man of the house and selects a poem to read to the lady of the house.

When the fire starts, the house does everything it can to save itself. The sprinklers come on, the doors shut, and a green chemical is sprayed, but to no avail.  The house's efforts to save itself are as futile as its efforts to serve the family that once lived in it. Throughout the story, Bradbury leaves clues that the family has perished in a nuclear holocaust. 

"The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly."

What activities does the house in "There Will Come Soft Rains" perform?

Really, the house in this story does absolutely everything, it seems.  It tells time, it cleans the dog, it hardly seems like the people would need to do anything.

• It makes the breakfast itself
• It reminds the people who live there of all the things they need to do that day -- whose birthday, whose anniversary, what bills are due, etc.
• It automatically cleans everything
• It shuts windows and closes doors and locks up.
• When the dog dies, it gets rid of the body
• It plays music
• It sets out a table and cards for a scheduled game

What are three functions performed by the house in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The futuristic house in Bradbury’s, “There Will Come Soft Rains” does just about everything for its owners except save them from a nuclear war.  The house is vacant except for all the technology and mechanical gadgets that live on despite their owners’ deaths. 

Here are some of the things this “smart house” did for its owners:

• A mechanical stove makes breakfast for the family.
• There are robot vacuum cleaners or “mice” that clean up any messes in the house (including the dead dog outside).
• The house is full of mechanical voices that tell the time and weather.  A clock repeats the hour and reminds the family of important events.
• The house prepares baths for its family.
• It lights a pipe for the father of the house.
• When the house catches on fire, there is a sprinkler system that attempts to douse the flames. 
• Piped in music plays the homeowner’s favorite songs.
• The mechanical voice reads a Sara Teasdale poem; the first line has the title of the story.

In this excerpt, Bradbury describes the technology of the house as a religion, a way of life for its former inhabitants, “The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.”

The irony of the story is that despite all the technology of this society, it is that very technology that kills them.